III
ANGEL ADVOCACY
For more than half a century the humourist gravelled for matter has found the ugliness of the Albert Memorial an easy escape from his difficulties. To mention it is to raise a laugh.
But is it so ugly?
Conceiving that the time was ripe to put my own authentic impressions above hearsay, I have made a pilgrimage to this shrine and subjected it to the most careful examination.
I was amply repaid. Alike when resting on the comfortable seats around its enclosure, taking in the structure as a whole, or when scrutinising its sculptures at close range, I was pleasantly entertained, and I came to the decision that the Albert Memorial not only has more in it to attract than to repel, but is a very remarkable summary of the triumphs of Science and Art: as good a lesson book as bronze and stone could compile.
But even if this judgment is wrong, and the Albert Memorial really deserves the facile execration by you and me which so long has been its portion, that is not all. The subject is by no means closed. For you and I are not everybody; we are getting old and tired and exacting, and we are more disposed to complain of what we miss than to be happy with what we find. There are, in the world, others whose attitude is simpler than ours, whose views quite possibly are more important, to whose by no means foolish eyes the Albert Memorial is beyond praise—adequate, stimulating, splendid. I mean children.
Sir Gilbert Scott, the designer of the Albert Memorial, knowing, either consciously or subconsciously—but the result is the same—that the principal frequenters of Kensington Gardens are children, behaved accordingly.